This application relates to systems and methods for implanting devices such as replacement heart valves, clips, stents, and similar repair devices within the anatomy of a patient.
It is well known in the art to implant devices such as replacement heart valves, clips, stents, and reinforcement rings, and the like into the human heart to repair the function of the human heart. Similar devices are also introduced into other parts of the human anatomy where mechanical repair is needed. Many such repair operations are carried out by first inserting a delivery catheter by minimally invasive means into a desired organ of the human anatomy. Thereafter, a repair device is passed through an internal lumen along the entire length of the delivery catheter until the repair device reaches the target organ, and the device is pushed out of the distal end of the catheter for implantation. Such devices may expand to assume a new shape once they are pushed out of the delivery catheter, some by means of self-expansion, others by means of mechanical expansion via balloons, expanders, and the like.
One of the problems confronted by such systems known in the art is that the delivery catheter may require to be threaded through a tortuous series of twists and turns through one or more lumens in the patient's anatomy. Once the delivery catheter is in position, the implant device must be pushed up, from outside the patient, through a lumen of this tortuously twisted delivery catheter. If the implant device has a substantial profile in its delivery condition, the surgeon may encounter difficulty in threading the implant device around all the tight corners of the delivery catheter. Further, once the implant device reaches the distal end of the delivery catheter, the surgeon may find that she has no control over the orientation of the distal end of the catheter because the catheter has effectively neither tortional stiffness, nor longitudinal stiffness extending unbroken all the way from the proximal end where a control handle is located, to the distal end where the device will eventually be delivered. Although delivery catheters may include pullwires to facilitate positioning the catheter's distal tip in a three dimensional space, such pullwire systems are frequently difficult to operate and not reliable for exact positioning.
Therefore there exists a need in the art for improved systems and methods for delivering implant devices to a distal end of a delivery catheter, and once having so delivered, to be able to manipulate the distal end of the catheter by manipulating the proximal end of the catheter. The present invention addresses these and other needs.